He is author of. The Disciples' Sprititual Strength. Now all of a sudden, as Peter steps forward, and of course, you know the story of Peter. They were with Him and they asked Him in verse 6, "Lord, will You at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?" We take that for the story that it is, and the gift of tongues, and the speaking of tongues that the Scriptures talk about but we don't see that as what we need to be doing in practice or in faith, but it is a dramatic story. And if those are the weapons of our warfare, then we can handle them. Life, that a doubt every once in a while creeps in, sometimes an unbelief, fear, bonds of trust might be tested. But first let me tell you why I think it is so relevant. These accounts of like what we have read in the gospels and others for a 40-day period. Let's go into Luke's account. Those in the flesh are devoid of the Spirit and cannot submit to God's law or please God. We, again, don't necessarily always pause and think about this, in these hours and days following Christ's resurrection. And a voice from heaven like many waters, and the voice of thunder, and the sound of harpers playing their harps, they sang as it were a new song before the throne, before the four living creatures and the elders. And every breath you take ought to be a prayer of thanks that you live and move and have your being in the Spirit of God. As we came here this morning, to services, and as we gathered here this morning ourselves, there is a very important lesson for us to learn as well. 20:22), which also tends to disrupt the theology of some! It only takes a minute to sign up. So here's my answer to why the experience of the Old Testament saints is valuable for us today. I never have believed in knowledge for its own sake or art for art's sake. 38Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. 39By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Not only apostles, but even the prophets of the Old Testament, who are lower than apostles, had a degree of presence of Spirit in themselves, through Whom they prophesied (needn't to give references, for they are so numerous!). Suddenly, Jesus appeared in the middle of the group. And it is in that, we reach the real nexus, the real critical point of our life before God, where we recognize that, with the Holy Spirit, we are taking on the very nature of God, the divine nature. Thanks for contributing an answer to Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange! But Jesus immediately said to them: 'Take courage! Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus has died .John 4:11-14 Come on. We often think a miracle would be just what we need. People need to see that Spirit within us. Second, the OT believers experienced the new birth and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We can take on that nature and we can live. But they saw Him for a period of time, and that's how I like to imagine it. The people who have faith in me without seeing me are the ones who are really blessed!. Or is it? And to live with the reality that there is a God who judges, who sees, and who knows. After Pentecost, they were different people. They had hoped He would overcome the power of the Roman government and establish a new kingdom, and now their hopes of this vanished. " They were able to do the things Jesus gave them authority to do and they found it amazing. Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers. I like that phrase. Jesus was enveloped within a pillar of fire, but was not harmed. Please take the Tour, see below, where you will find that in order to practice biblical hermeneutics we need a text upon which to practice the technique. And so I made a certain few inquiries, I got on the bus, didn't miss it. Paul says in Romans 8:79, "The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed, it cannot; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. They were also filled with fear for their own future. I took a course in seminary on the Old Testament wisdom literature where we talked about Hebrew poetic parallelism and determinism and Heilesgeschichte ("salvation history") and I would generally raise my hand at the end of class and say, "So what?" Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." So it was a bodily appearance that He made completely to them, and He showed them His hands and His feet. Eighth, some OT believers were enabled by the Spirit to do extraordinary feats of power to help God's people. Finally, the Holy Spirit gave some in the OT a gift of prophecy. So He begins to teach them from the Scriptures that they might understand, and that they might comprehend what He was and how He had fulfilled everything that they would have understood to one degree, and then even more they had begun to develop a fuller understanding of the prophecies of Isaiah, or Joel, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, the statements about the Messiah. With a UCG.org account you will be able to save items to read and study later! In one sense, all craftsmanship and artistic ability is a gift of God, just like our breath is. We sometimes just kind of tail off when we get to the end of one of the Gospels and we know the events, Christ was crucified, Christ was risen, and we don't look at some of the details there. I don't think it was an intergalactic tour that He was on to get to the third heaven. I must put my hand where the spear went into his side. The disciples had seen Jesus reach out across ethnic and religious divides birth in His parables and in real life. The disciples were afraid of the Jewish leaders, and on the evening of that same Sunday they locked themselves in a room. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. The gospels and the book of Acts tell us that would-be zealots and messiahs had come and gone. But some doubted." They need to see within us, Jesus Christ. The indwelling Holy Spirit was only sent after Jesus' resurrection. On that day of Pentecost, people who had been doubtful were moved to speak powerfully, to repentance, to belief, and to action. Back in Mark's account, chapter 16 of Mark, we see that the same thing lingered among the wide group of people there. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. The bonds of trust among the disciples were beginning to be frayed. But all of this in the midst of a troubled, terrified, frightened mindset that they were having to work through, during these days between the resurrection and Pentecost. Not many days, we would look at it roughly 10 days from that 40-day period. Today the Spirit still instructs us by the Word of Scripture and we ought to pray earnestly for an outpouring of God's enlightening Spirit so that the Scriptures really live for us and become intensely personal. A Church that was grounded in the Word of God. Peter says, "Repent, believe, be baptized, you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." 2. Surely for a Christian all study and all creative work must justify itself in terms of love. Send inquiries regarding the operation of this Web site to webmaster@ucg.org. That Christianity grew, after such a brief inception, into the world religion we know to today is testimony to the power of the message Jesus preached. I was standing there gazing, not quite knowing what to do. Pentecost was a Jewish festival fifty days after the Passover. Everybody who gets up and gives a sermon in a congregation, that sermon before it's ever posted on a website, has been reviewed or at least approved by individuals within the congregation. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. We've just read it. And it is Christ in us that is that hope of glory. Jesus continued: "Truly I tell you, when you were younger, you would tie your belt and walk wherever you wanted. The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover." Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. 1. It's God's Spirit that is the only thing that we can have to overcome those fears, because really, it's all the Church of God has ever had. That Numbers 32 and verse 23, is correct. Show them otherwise what had been done, rebuke their unbelief, as it goes along here. PrivacyPolicyTerms ofUse. And they're seeing that, and it's the final time. The appearance of Jesus' face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. They had not been a part of anything like that before. They didn't believe that He had risen, they didn't believe that they had been seen, that He had been seen, and therefore, then they would not believe these eyewitnesses. That's how I imagine it and He was home, He was back at, He was at the third heaven. But by doing so, when you read the account, you understand that they knew the Scripture, and they applied Scripture to their choice and their decision to replace Judas. Week 8 to Pentecost. And it was the high priest and those people who had engineered His death, and they knew the power that they did have. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. Doubt, some of them doubt, what did they doubt? It's always fun to try to imagine how this happened. After Jesus had greeted them again, he said, I am sending you, just as the Father has sent me. Then he breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. About 10 days earlier, Christ had finally ascended for the final time and they were left alone. Were on a mission to change that. For example, Numbers 14:24 says of Caleb, "My servant Caleb, because he has a different Spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into this land." 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. Again, what they thought that they were becoming a part of was a movement that was noble, that was good, there had been many movements of other Messiah-type figures at this period of time in Judea. She went and told those who had been with Him as they mourned and wept." Those in the Spirit are indwelt by the Spirit and are enabled by him to fulfill the just requirement of the law. You remember what Ruth said to Naomi when Naomi, in the book of Ruth, had lost her husband and children, and these two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, tried to follow her away from Moab, and Orpah decided to leave. It is the Word of God and it is the Spirit of God that did it for them, and will do it for you and for I today as we live our lives, as we go about our lives. Two things we can summarize to show what was the key to bring about this scene that we see here at the end of chapter 2 in Acts. And speaking about the deep things of the Kingdom of God to prepare them for what they were to take part in, and what they were to be a part of. They saw it in different ways and understood it completely different from anything from our frame of reference and they were ascribing, would have been ascribing then even to Jesus something that was not of God, which in itself can be a problem. What we read about back in Matthew 28:19 Matthew 28:19Go you therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:American King James Versionof the gospel being taken to the world. Stop doubting and have faith! Yet until the spirit was poured out at Pentecost, the disciples were a homogenous bunch. He greeted his disciples and said to Thomas, Put your finger here and look at my hands! Jesus came in while the doors were still locked and stood in the middle of the group. It goes on, "Jesus came and He spoke to them saying, 'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. We can internalize that and think that through. What did they do during that 10 days? This means that the disciples could not have Christ in them, as we born again believers have, until the day of Pentecost. 3. They thought that the body had been ferretted away by the disciples, someone had stolen it. Would it make any difference for our lives today if we knew the answer? He quotes Joel, he quotes Psalms and he gives interpretations upon those scriptures, here in chapter 1, no one had ever heard of before. What is "the gift" of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:38? Hadn't He told them that He'd come back to life again? The goal is that the addition of scriptural verses will assist you in meditating on the Mysteries of the Rosary as you pray. And yet, they had not been able to completely separate the fact that now what they were part of was the real, the real thing, because Christ had died. So if I can come back to the question that I asked, what was going through their mind on that morning of Pentecost? The Day of Pentecost is celebrated 50 days after Easter in Western branches of Christianity. A firstfruit is one who follows Christ. And so she was the first to see the empty tomb and have that appearance, and she goes and tells them. Instead of conflict, they were now collaborating. They might have fidgeted a bit and wondered, "Well, should we go fishing?" The world we grew up in and live in does not see things this way. We do well to read about these things, and ask ourselves the simple question: if they experienced so much of God's Spirit which was but a trickle of the reservoir, how much more should we enjoy under the dozen turbines of Pentecost? and the preacher says, "So what?" If you forgive anyone's sins, they will be forgiven. What happens?". For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.". A period of unity, one accord, fellowship, love for one another, treating people as equals, not in a completely socialistic manner that we understand from our modern context of socialism, or the welfare type of society. I remember taking my little bag and walking over and kind of looking around, and sitting down on a bench. And yet some doubted. I didn't know how to read a board to tell me these things. It wasn't a common manifestation of the Spirit, but it was real then and it is today. The disciples had to walk a week away to get to Jerusalem (Acts 1:12). Did they doubt what they were seeing? Peter says, "In the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy." And He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures.". Though a miracle had taken place in front of them, that still wasn't enough to remove the doubt and fear. So it's something for us to examine in our own way, see how much of that is being demonstrated in our life. It was the Roman soldiers that had carried out the death of Christ and had sealed the tomb and a Roman guard had been placed there. They turned the world upside down because they fully understood two simple . From this point, they had only 10 days. Then Peter preached a sermon and said, "This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel, 'And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams'" (Acts 2:1617). This is it. https://www.bible.com/bible/392/JHN.20.19-29.CEV. We get on to verse 40, the wrap-up: "With many other words, he testified and exhorted them saying, Be saved from this perverse generation, that those who were, who gladly received his word were baptized; about 3,000 souls were added to them. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. Jentezen Franklin preached a sermon about scribes. This makes it seem that the Disciples were astonished, but those who followed behind them were afraid. In verse 14, it says, "Then later He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table and He rebuked them, rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen." This was just three and a half years, and in really a few weeks, seven weeks and a day of intense thought, emotion, that they had to grapple with and deal with as they came into the presence of one another on the morning of Pentecost. He spent days and days, and weeks and weeks doing that, bringing new dimension of understanding to the Scriptures that they had never had. Zechariah's prophecy in chapter 14 shows that Christ will, on that day, set foot on the Mount of Olives. Luke 2:25-27. Some say apostles got Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Verses 40 to 47 is a summary of one of the most remarkable periods of the church experience. Just think, if Jews returning from God's judgment in Babylonian exile can take heart that God's Spirit will protect them, how much more fearless should we be who have the overwhelming assurance of God's love and power in Jesus' death and resurrection! Having Peter's undivided attention, Jesus spoke of the eventual crossing of Peter's own finish line. From the sorrow of the Cross to the glory of Resurrection. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. Finally, please know the disciples did receive the Spirit when Jesus breathed on them BEFORE Pentecost (Jn. But we do not debate and discuss biblical topics. ", A church begins to develop. There are two groups of humans: those in the flesh (born of the flesh) and those in the Spirit (born again of the Spirit). "For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.". Praying a Scriptural Rosary is accomplished by praying a traditional Rosary and adding scriptural verses related to each mystery of the Rosary. Matthew 71:seventeen, XVII, 10-18, and on the Sabbath (beginning): Rome, 111:seventeen, XIII, 1-10. When did the disciples become born -again? Well, the real answer is for you and I, the same things that are going through your mind right now, and my mind. So at 9:00 on Pentecost morning, while the disciples were praying, "a sound came from heaven like a rush of mighty wind . This salvation experience comes before the . Mt., 47 counts, XII, 30-37)<br> <br> Gospel Reading (Matthew 71 ch., XVII, 10-18)<br> <br>10 And his disciples asked . I wouldn't bother with the question if I didn't. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. They had come up against the two most powerful authorities of their day in their world. But as Christ begins to give them the teaching from the Scriptures, of how He had fulfilled literally, in every way, the scriptures about the Messiah. And it is also the mission of the Church, we see right here, it has begun. When He approached, they thought they saw a spirit and were afraid, and of course, Peter became afraid when he saw the waves and felt the wind, when he was attempting to walk on the waves to Jesus. Acts 1:8 is the vital point about Pentecost. And then even when we see in the days after Jesus' final ascension, a roughly 10-day period, when they came to make a decision to replace Judas, they read Scripture, they applied it properly, God blessed the decision. He greeted them Douay-Rheims Bible rev2023.3.1.43269. This is the dimension that was given on Pentecost, and what this day is all about for those of us who are the firstfruits. He used Deborah and the tribe of Zebulun (the mountain may have been in their land) in the sermon. Old Testament believers enjoyed the presence of God's Spirit wherever they went.

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